Through shuddering, frail hands, I punch in the cell number under Demi’s name. The sweetest singsong voice I’ve ever heard sounds down the line a couple of rings later, “Hello.”
You can hear the suspicion in Demi’s voice. It raises my lips half an inch. “Hey—”
“Oh my God, Maddox.” She instructs for someone to pull over before she sobs down the line. “We just left Wallens Ridge. They said you didn’t want to see me. Please, don’t shut me out. We’re meant to be in this together. You and me, remember? Together forever.”
I thought I’d be too dehydrated for her response to make me teary-eyed. It shows how much I know about my body. It could have lasted months in the hole if my heart hadn’t convinced it otherwise.
“Can you come?” I want to say more. I just can’t. I’m too choked up emotionally to form words, let alone the fact every word I speak is being scrutinized by Agent Moses, the warden, and two guards.
I hear Demi drag her hand across her cheeks before she replies, “Yes, of course. When?”
“Now?”
Her sob almost tears me in half. “Now?” she asks, certain she heard me wrong. She didn’t, but I don’t get the chance to explain. “We will be there in less than thirty minutes.”
As gravel crunches under tires, Agent Moses hits me with a look, one that restates his terms in our agreement.
“Demi…”
Air catches in her throat like she’s been dying to hear me say her name as I have been to hear her say mine. “Yeah.”
“You need to come in alone.” It dawns on me that she has me on speaker phone when the brutal swallow of a man uncomfortable with my terms sounds down the line. Since that is their only objection, it doesn’t take me long to realize she must be traveling with Caidyn. “Tell Caidyn I will catch up with him on the next visitation day.”
After a beat, Demi breathes out slowly, “Okay. I’ll see you soon.” Just as Agent Moses snatches his phone out of my hand, she adds, “I love you.”
“I love you back, baby. Don’t ever forget that,” I shout, hopeful she’ll catch my first sentence before Agent Moses disconnects our call.
His lack of respect has me itching to smash his teeth in, but the knowledge Demi is only minutes away harnesses the desire. I haven’t seen her in the flesh in weeks, and I’m not ashamed to admit it is killing me.
Twenty-two minutes later, Demi is guided into a room at the back of the west wing by the warden. The unease on her face at being deep in the underbelly of a prison system clears away for sheer, unadulterated panic when her eyes land on me standing across from her. I used the gap in the timeline in my favor. I shaved, scrubbed my teeth, and changed out of the soiled clothes I had worn the past six days straight, but you wouldn’t know that when Demi’s hand darts up to cover her fretful sob.
“It’s okay,” I promise her, hating that the first thing she feels upon seeing me is sorrow when all I’m feeling is euphoria. “I’m okay.”
Tears are streaming down her face, and there’s a mess under her nose, but I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid my eyes on. The pounds I lost the past couple of weeks she put on, her hair has grown almost an inch, and the glossy sheen in her eyes makes them the brightest they’ve ever been. She is truly stunning, and as predicted, her closeness gives the pain in my chest purpose.
I’m stuck here so she can be free.
That in itself is worth an eternity in hell.
I wait for the guards to leave us alone before gesturing for Demi to come to my half of the room. I would move for her, but I can’t trust my legs. They’re already wobbling under the strain of my weight. I don’t think it would be wise to add walking into the mix.
Mercifully, the click of the lock latching into place sees Demi cross the room at the speed of lightning. She throws her arms around my neck so fiercely we topple onto the sofa I stood from when my body detected she was close. She kisses me, scrubs her cheeks across my freshly shaved chin, then cups my jaw in her hands, where she spends the next eight minutes gazing into my eyes. We don’t speak. We don’t need to. Everything we need to say to each other is relayed in our eyes. Our love. Our grit. Our fight. This tiny moment in time makes all the bad worthwhile.
“I love you,” Demi whispers a short time later. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you,” she says on repeat like she’s making up for the times she couldn’t say it the past six weeks. “And that love will get you out of here. I promise you that.”
She repeats her promise when the guards return to tell us our time is up, then she says it again when I’m led out of the room in shackles. I’d be worried about the determination on her face if I didn’t love it so much.
Although this isn’t exactly how I envisioned our life, it is pretty damn close. Demi is strong, free, and so far out of her uncle’s clutch that she can finally expand her wings. Her metamorphosis proves that even when you think your life is close to being over, you can still learn how to fly. I’ll try to remember that the next time I’m cocooned by darkness.
As one of my father’s favorite quotes says, “If we fail to adapt, we fail to move forward.”
I can’t afford to stay behind, so I have no choice but to adapt.
I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep my relationship with Demi strong because it is our relationship that keeps me strong.
9
Demi
